Bill Gates has finally hired himself a new CTO.

It's Lotus Notes inventor Ray Ozzie. While Ray may think he sold a company to Microsoft, Groove Networks, in fact his world is about to get rocked like never before.

Groove does collaboration tools, and Microsoft (an early investor) is interested in those things. But I don't think Gates signed off on this deal to get Groove's technology, otherwise he never would have un-retired Nathan Myhrvold's title. (Microsoft currently has three people with the CTO title, meaning no one really has the power.)

The bottom line is that Gates needs Ray Ozzie, and he needs him bad.

Microsoft puts more dollars into new technology development than just about anyone else in the world, but it gets less bang for its buck than any outfit since Xerox PARC. Microsoft Research has a ton of high bandwidth people, they're doing all sorts of high bandwidth things, but when was the last time Microsoft introduced anything of real importance?

That's what Ray will be tasked with sorting out.

Please don't read too much criticism of Gates into this.

For some reason, few computer companies have been able to turn research investments into a technology product pipeline. (Many drug industry mergers are driven by the same problem.) Companies have a better record of doing what Gates did here, buying an entrepreneurial effort and bringing their best people into decision-making roles.

This is, in fact, how Windows got to be Windows. The team under David Weise that did the work on "enhanced mode," which broke the 640K memory barrier and made the use of memory-hogging programs possible, came in through an acquisition. (Weise left Microsoft last month, adding urgency to the Ozzie acquisition.)

With Ozzie, Gates hopes lightning strikes again.

I hope he's right.